Aftertaste
by shoxxic
Summary: Dying in style.


**Notes:** Quick retake on 99.

* * *

His cancer dangled from his lips like unread suicide letters, curving sharply in, sloping honey—the sweet aftertaste that made it all worth it.

The smoke from his cigarette curled like Arabic subtitles.

Slow.

Extrinsic.

Delicate.

And if Matt was the type for epiphanies and girly shit like that, he could've said that his vapor nicotine obscured the answers they labored for or something equally deep and abstruse. But Matt never was one for heavy pretense like context or subtleties. His faux fur-trimmed jacket smelled too much like tar and chocolate.

But it didn't matter how often or how he washed his clothes—his cloves clung on every crisscross inch of fabric. After all, Matt washed to clean, never to wash away.

Never away.

More substantial than the everyday cigarette stubs and the trashcan, Mello clung on his clothes, like alkaloids and yesterday's smoke. And Matt needed that, needed to inhale that every day to keep on going, to relive that epinephrine rush and all the fast cheap thrills he decided that he would live for. So he'd inhale, to remember all the times he needed to remember he was alive - really living - in this boring, never-ending world of gray, skyscrapers, and the smog.

But Mello never was one for soliloquies or epithets. He came off all bronze edge and gunslinger, with his peroxide-blond bob cut and vending machine studded cross ("Why the hell are you following me?" was the first question he'd hurled at Matt), so cigarette boy choked back on his cancer, still content. He never really cared one way or another.

("And why the hell do you keep doing that? Smoking, I mean. It's fucking killing you. You know that, don't you?"

Matt actually had an answer to this one.

At least, he'd explain, I'd be the one killing myself_._)

Matt took another breath.

They were always fleeting and constant and transient. A flicker.

Indefinite.

Infinite.

Always burning through the yellow lights. Always breaking rules and flying through motels. Always clicking guns and always on the go.

It was never a question of stopping.

Not then, and not now.

Matt stepped on the gas. Mello's fingers curled around the motorcycle handles.

Sirens, red, and the speed—it was all part of a game he was all too familiar with, so Matt eased down the lanes, way over the speed limit (but since when did he care about limits?), cancer stick in mouth and gun bulging in right pocket. Cigarette boy wasn't fazed.

He had the circle curve of a steering wheel and the easy pull of a trigger both at the steady of his fingertips. It was supposed to be a clean and easy sweep, but what the fuck, he mused. Maybe that's what you get for stealing from the chapel.

He wouldn't know.

He didn't really care.

The way Matt saw it, this was all just another game, anyways. That was life, he deduced: a finite, too long game he wasn't sure he could live against. Wasn't sure he wanted to live against. Hell, he hadn't made it to the twenty-year mark yet, but it was already all so tiring.

He just wanted to see how long it would take before—

He bulleted.

Luxury autos swerved towards his beat-up retro car. A split-second pulsating before the crash—Matt impulsively slammed the brakes. _Shit_.

He languidly readjusted his cheap orange-tinted goggles, and his cigarette was gnashed and broken and sore between his teeth. A practiced sigh (and the things I do for you)—"I guess I'll have to use the smoke screen again..."

The luxury cars propelled forward, closing in, circumscribing him. Trapped.

Matt tapped his fingers over the trigger. He stumbled out of his car, nicotine breath clashing (fusing) with the heavens. Oh well. It wasn't like the sky wasn't polluted before him, anyways. "Oh, come on," he breezed. "Since when were the Japanese allowed to carry guns like that?"

Mechanics clicked.

Raspy—_he couldn't just die _that easily dammit; "Hey, hey. Listen. I'm connected with Takada's kidnapper." Sidestepped. "You probably have a lot of questions you want to—"

Bullets slammed.

_Fuck,_

He breathed in - took in the smell of chocolates and leather and cloves.

Familiar.

Harsh.

Savage.

Like he couldn't breathe.

_Fucking bastards. Fuck - if you think you're the ones killing me_—_this is my game_—_andyoudontunderstand__, okay? you don't understand, okay, you don't understand, I take my own_—

And his cancer dangled from his lips like unread suicide letters, curving sharply in, sloping honey—the sweet aftertaste that made it all worth it.

He inhaled.

The sky was a toxic purple through the cheap plastic orange tint of his goggles. Another barrage of bullets tore black.

The liquid copper fountain sputtering in his mouth.

Matt lifted his middle finger. Assholes, he thought. Assholes.

He wasn't ready to just fucking die.

_For the record, this is all part of the game we've set up. You think you're the ones who killed me? _

_This ain't your doing. It's mine._

Fingers on the trigger.

His lungs shattered.

_Scream_

Slow,

his breaths stilled, and the cigarette smoke rasped into the polluted skies, commixing. Dissolving. Fading, until all of him was flushed, fused, with the open air.

His blood on the ground.

A moment of silence, and then:

"Fucking idiot. He wouldn't have said anything important anyways. Come on, let's go."


End file.
